Monday, March 30, 2009

Giza, Egypt

I was happy that I was able to sleep the whole night through which sometimes does not happen with jetlag. I talked with Pat before going down to the breakfast buffet. The streets are very active this morning with thousands of blaring horns and the air looks very polluted compared to yesterday.

In, I believe 1977; a friend and I wanted to see the King Tut Exhibition while it was traveling through the United States. Tickets were very hard to come by and we ended up having to go to Seattle to see it. From the day I saw the exhibition I knew I wanted to go to Egypt to see the Pyramids. Well that day had come today and I was really excited. One more thing to scratch off of my bucket list.

We left our hotel promptly at 7:30 but did not actually leave the parking lot until 7:45. It took 15 full minutes due to incredible traffic just to get on the road. We were going to begin our day in Saqqara. This involved leaving the traffic and smog of Giza and heading about 15 miles south. We entered large date farms and saw many donkeys pulling carts and water buffalo (like the ones we saw in Viet Nam).

Saqqara is one of the richest archaeological sites in Egypt. Just a few months before I read they discovered the tomb of a queen here. The centerpiece is the Step Pyramid built in the 27th century BC.Though it is 34 high, it was completely buried in sand and was not rediscovered until 1851. This was actually the first pyramid ever built. Prior to this Egyptian Royal tombs had been underground rooms covered with low, flat mud brick. We entered the tomb of Akhti-Hotep and were utterly in awe when we saw all original carved hieroglyphs on the walls, some of which were painted. It is amazing that these are perfectly preserved after 4700 years. Salah gave us a fascinating tour explaining all of the engraved panels.

After the visit of this site we were taken to a carpet school where teens were making wool, silk and cotton carpets. We learned all about the knot tying and the looms. It was amazing how fast their nimble finger could work. We had seen a demonstration similar to this when we visited Turkey in 1998.

As we headed back towards Giza, the guide talked about a lot of different topics such as education, property tax, population, etc. Our next stop was lunch. We went to a very nice outdoor restaurant and as we entered the alleyway saw a man cooking delicious smelling roasted chickens over an open fire.

Before I get on to my highlight of the day I wanted to mention our "security guard". I do not know what his name is but he rides in our bus everywhere. He wears a suit and under his coat there is a machine gun, a pistol and a walkie talkie. There may me loads more paraphernalia because all of his pockets are bulging. We also must pass through a metal detector when entering our hotel. Tourism is an 8 billion dollar a year industry in Egypt and our tour company is going out of their way to make certain everyone is safe in light of the Cairo bombing a couple months ago.

And now to the Giza Plateau. Nearly 5000 years ago Giza became the Royal burial ground. In less than 100 yeas, the ancient Egyptians built three pyramid complexes to serve as tombs for their dead kings'. The kings were buried under and in some cases within the pyramid. The mortuary temples were maintained for many years afterwards with priests making daily offerings. The king's close family and Royal court were buried in satellite pyramids seeking to share in the king's power in death as they had in life.

The Sphinx is the guardian of the Giza Plateau. Most believe that the head is that of King Khafee.

After our visit we returned for about an hour to our rooms and then returned again to the Giza Plateau for a sound and light show that was interesting. We saw the pyramids at sunset and by the time the show started, the thin New Moon was overhead.